Soren Thilo Funder

During the 1755 Lisbon earthquake Voltaire and Ted Kaczynski meets in a cold war bunker outside Copenhagen to engage in reflections on the future of mankind in the face of disaster. Voltaire recites parts of his poem about the devastating earthquake that nearly completely destroyed Lisbon. With its tens of thousands of victims it became one of the deadliest in history and had a strong influence on the development of the philosophy of Enlightenment. Also known as the “Unabomber”, Ted Kaczynski conducted a series of terrorist attacks motivated by a fight against the disastrous effects of industrial society in the name of freedom and nature. He lived alone in a cabin in the Montana mountains without electricity for nearly 20 years. He now returns to his past in Mathematics working intensively on the theories of the Zeeman Disaster Machine, a small device build to visualize the unpredictable jumps of the Cusp Catastrophe, the sudden disturbance of a stable situation. In the space the content of a 72-hour Bug Out Bag is laid out as a landscape of preparation, delicate optimism and forewarning.